Wreckage — and lots of it — was on the minds of planners when they were crafting the master plan for HemisFair Park. For better or worse, the document calls for the demolition of the western portion of the Convention Center, and the complete leveling of the John Wood Courthouse and the Institute of Texan Cultures. The new ITC would take up residence near the northwest corner of the park.

On March 21, the San Antonio Conservation Society’s board amended its 2009 stance, and now opposes the demolition of the ITC and courthouse:

In particular we support the retention and rehabilitation of:
• The Tower of the Americas
• The Institute of Texan Cultures
• The Wood Courthouse
— Addendum to the San Antonio Conservation Society March 6, 2009 Position Paper on the HemisFair Park Master Plan

According to Nancy Avellar, president of the Conservation Society, the group’s position on the Institute of Texan Cultures is consistent with that of the Texas Historical Commission.

“They are advocating for the retention of the ITC they feel it’s an important design and building — designed by a very prominent architectural firm (Caudill Rowlett Scott and Callins & Wagner),” Avellar said.

A museum of the University of Texas at San Antonio, and therefore of the University of Texas System, the Institute of Texan Cultures is owned by the great state of Texas.

On the other hand, the Wood Courthouse is owned by the U.S. government, which has agreed to hand ownership of the 360-degree structure to the city and in return receive the current SAPD headquarters for a new federal courthouse.

Avellar said the Conservation Society feels the courthouse is an iconic building significant to HemisFair ’68, and therefore deserves saving.

“Generally the secretary of interior’s standards are 50 years,” Avellar said. “It’s not quite there, but we are recognizing it more for the significance of its architecture, and its significance to HemisFair.”

The Conservation Society and the HemisFair Park Area Redevelopment Corporation, the group appointed by the city to oversee the park’s reinvention, have not met since the society’s board amended its position. But it’s the start of a public conversation about exactly what percentage of the master plan should be executed — or, more to the point — can be executed.

“What I’m going to do is consider the appropriate steps in continuing the building,” HPARC CEO Andres Andujar said. “First, we are going to see … what kind of reuse it could be. Maybe, reuse them as a residential complex. … And we would do that all in the open. As we have in the past, we will engage in the community.”

Andujar said he has heard from people who are vehemently opposed to the demolition of the ITC and Wood Courthouse, and equally from those who don’t want to see them there anymore.

“You always have two sides to the story,” Andujar said.

HPARC and the ITC have talked numerous times over the past year about the museum’s future. The master plan calls for residential development on the 14-plus acres currently occupied by ITC.

The city has pitched the possibility of the ITC relocating to a segment of the convention center, west of the river, near the northwest corner of the park at Market and Alamo streets.

“At the end of the day, the potential exists for the museum to be the closest building to the intersection of Market and South Alamo,” Aaron Parks, assistant executive director at ITC, said. “From a real estate perspective, it’s a great location.”

“Whether the museum resides in the current facility or moves to the northwest corner, the ITC is going to be a cornerstone of HemisFair Park redevelopment,” Parks said.

But Parks said, the two sides are “so far down the road from that.”

Today, the U.S. government owns three structures at HemisFair Park: the courthouse, the Spear Judicial Training Center and a multi-story building at 727 E. Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard. Under the HemisFair Park master plan, the courthouse and training center would be razed to make room for redevelopment. But not having control of the multi-story building and parking lot limit HPARC’s plans for the park.

J.D. Salinas, III, regional administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration, told this blog in February that the government plans to retain ownership of the building at 727 E. Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard, as well as the parking lots across the street from Chavez.

“They (city) have asked us for that building,” Salinas said. “We would have to have equal accommodations or better to make that happen.”

Clarification: A sentence toward the bottom had suggested the city had eliminated the possibility of the Institute of Texan Cultures moving to near the northwest corner of the park. The complete opposite it true. As of today, the city’s preference is for the ITC to move there, but negotiations are in the earliest of stages. Poor writing on my part.